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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25467553">Paper Flowers</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/pseuds/WrithingBeneathYou'>WrithingBeneathYou</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, See note for specific warnings, consensual genjutsu, edo tensei fantasies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:08:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,660</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25467553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/pseuds/WrithingBeneathYou</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>False memories come in clips and disjointed phrases.</p>
<p>A different time, a different place, a different future all crafted by the eyes of an artisan.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Izuna</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Paper Flowers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perelka_L/gifts">Perelka_L</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the TobiIzu gift exchange. I hope you like it!</p>
<p><b>Warnings:</b> Before the more typical smut, there's a necro scene and wound fucking. Sorry, not sorry. :D</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>False memories come in clips and disjointed phrases.</p>
<p>A different time, a different place, a different <em>future</em> all crafted by the eyes of an artisan.</p>
<p>Tobirama recalls the image if not the feel of his katana sliding through Uchiha Izuna’s breast, just left of the sternum and a scant centimeter beneath the apex of his heart, the catch of bone forcing him to put his weight into it. Pale skin made paler by a splash of red, and the thrum of a labored pulse as his heart tries and fails to beat against the fluid rapidly filling in around it.</p>
<p>In that moment Tobirama isn’t sure which of them has been more thoroughly felled: Izuna on the end of his sword, or himself through sheer, unbridled<em> elation</em>.</p>
<p>Hashirama’s potent chakra flares across the battlefield just as Uchiha Madara’s bellowing begins to resolve into words. “Izuna!” “No!” “Don’t touch him!” A whole host of sentiments that are achingly misguided. They don’t understand that this was necessary, the first step in a long process of claiming what should have been his all along.</p>
<p>Izuna’s life. His death. His afterlife.</p>
<p>Everything he was and ever will be is Tobirama’s domain—his right—and as soon as the clans realize that this sacrifice was Izuna’s offering of peace, not to them, but to Tobirama himself, things will be different. They’ll have a village borne from the cradle of Izuna’s ribs where Tobirama’s heart has carved out a home.</p>
<p>In the end, they don’t realize. Things aren’t different. War continues to rage until there’s nothing left to give and Tobirama kneels on a lonely futon without the prize he had worked so hard to procure. No blindfold, no mental exercise can make his hands feel more finely boned or smooth with fire-wrought callus against his thighs. Nights spent tracing the trail of memory of what he’s lost in the scars littering his skin are the worst. </p>
<p>As time rolls on, a handshake is had between the wrong people amidst a general atmosphere of, not celebration, but tentative hope.</p>
<p>It’s disgusting. Wrong.</p>
<p>That should have been him before the kami and their clans ushering in a new age of prosperity, Izuna grinning up at him, all black veins and ethereal shimmer in the light of the shinigami’s defeat. Instead, Madara stole what wasn’t his to take.</p>
<p>One arduous year spent sabotaging the thieving jackal is all that’s necessary to finally run him off from the vigil he keeps over Izuna’s final resting place. While Anija may mourn the loss, Tobirama can only rejoice in his victory. He broaches the abandoned mausoleum, near vibrating with a chest fit to bursting. Maybe it’s the lingering residue of wards, maybe it’s a lifetime of anticipation culminating into this one frenetic point of fate, but his skin buzzes with increasing frequency as he approaches.</p>
<p>The Uchiha are well known for the construction of pyres to return the souls of their people to the reincarnation cycle. There are no empty epitaphs here, though. Madara was a brother in mourning, neither bending nor pious—he wasn’t the type of man to let go of the things he loved without proper motivation. A testament to that fact lies on a plinth of obsidian, wreathed in chakra so viscous it thickens the air itself. Beneath the haze of power lies a moon-pale face and the silhouettes of all of Tobirama’s dreams intertwined so intimately they’ve become a single, indigo mantle.</p>
<p>Uchiha Izuna.</p>
<p>Tobirama spends little time dismantling the wards. They’re simple, rudimentary, and imperfect despite their power. Once they shatter, it’s the smell that registers first, a pungent cocktail of decay interlaced with desiccated lavender. The flower’s petals have turned black and sticky against Izuna’s face where his jaw hangs lax in repose—far past the point of rigor mortis and well into the less savory phases of decomposition. It doesn’t matter, though, Izuna’s true beauty was never on the surface.</p>
<p>Tobirama leaps up onto the lip of the wooden coffin where it awaits him on the dias—waiting a moment in the silence for someone to stop him. No one does. Inhaling deeply, he lowers himself into the slip of space next to Izuna where he can take pleasure in the culmination of his life’s efforts.</p>
<p>Izuna’s corpse is cool against him and mottled in a strange panoply of purple and black that he first mistakes for draped hair. Blood has congealed under Izuna’s body and along the backs of his exposed forearms. The once white cushion beneath his head is brown from both ichor and years of neglect.</p>
<p>Tobirama grimaces.</p>
<p>This is distasteful. He never would have allowed a body to fall into such disrepair, to be treated with such <em>disrespect</em>. Brushing off an intrepid pillbug, he leans in to press his apology into Izuna’s lips, still full despite the state of him. They writhe in forgiveness—fetid, foul, and effective in making him feel whole for the first time in years.</p>
<p>Skin tears under his touch as he strokes a gaunt cheekbone, revealing white maggots and whiter bone.  There’s still so much life in him; it’s a breathtaking discovery.</p>
<p>He rolls them to the side in order to embrace Izuna more fully, and kisses with a passion they were never able to display in life. Putrefying flesh gives under his hands, fingers sinking between ribs and wetting his sleeves. Another tide of stench only makes him cling tighter, begin to rut in the space reserved for him between Izuna’s legs. Each limb is heavy, every stinking rush of fluid divine.</p>
<p>A brother could never have respected him so well as to give Izuna everything he needs but no longer has the voice to ask for. That’s why Tobirama is here. He’ll serve as a salve to ease the bite from the sins of the past and an anchor point for the brightness of their future.</p>
<p>He will be the dream Izuna deserved.</p>
<p>Familiar tension begins to coil in his loins. Frotting against Izuna’s bare pelvis—the softer bits long rotted away—with only a couple of layers of silk between them lends a sharpness to the pleasure. It’s desire and pain, and everything they’ve been missing.</p>
<p>Panting, Tobirama pushes himself to give Izuna all that he is physically capable of. His fists clench and his stomach burns with exertion. The fire under his skin flares hotter than a grand fireball, simultaneously too much and never enough.  </p>
<p>There’s a crack and a sudden give beneath his arms as he finds his release far too soon, the struts of Izuna’s rib cage along with him.</p>
<p>Warmth floods the front of his hakama. He can’t help but to shamelessly piston into the mess, wringing out every last pulse of his pleasure and calling out Izuna’s name in a baritone so deep it resonates throughout the tomb.  </p>
<p>Soon, their devotion will be realized. Soon their peace will be had.</p>
<p>Collapsing bonelessly, he allows Izuna to rest against his chest at the price of another kiss. His full lips are tender and yielding as they’ll never be again and, despite already having released, Tobirama’s flaccid cock twitches at the thought.  </p>
<p>They lie there for several minutes as Tobirama feeds Izuna his breath, slow and languorous. The mangled chest doesn’t rise with it, but that’s fine, it will soon enough. His life’s work boiled down into the elegant scrawl of a seal and an accompanying swell of chakra couched in desperation will have Izuna’s lungs filling deep enough to call out his name once again.</p>
<p>Those chilly fingers will fist in his hair and give back all of the passion they’ve been denied.</p>
<p>He maneuvers Izuna’s rictus grin into the crook of his neck and eases the gaping mandible closed to experience the drag of teeth and the wriggling maggots that feel nothing like a tongue. Still, it’s close enough to satisfy. For now.</p>
<p>“I’m done here,” Tobirama whispers into the corpse’s ear. “Go forward.”</p>
<p>The scene devolves into a brief swirl of tomoe on a backdrop of red, then flares with new life and a touch of longsuffering amusement.</p>
<p>Between heartbeats, Tobirama is back on his futon, straddling Izuna’s chest with bare thighs and digging his toes into the sheets for purchase. Sweat drips down his back despite the coolness of reanimated skin pressing up against his buttocks. Sage, it’s perfection in every sense the way they slide together, connecting seamlessly.</p>
<p>The gaping wound beneath Izuna’s sternum can’t reseal with the thickness of his cock thrusting into it, taking and giving in equal measure.</p>
<p>Tobirama groans—a full-throated thing—as the flare of his glans catches on flesh, pauses to let it heal just enough to tear open again around the thickness of his shaft.</p>
<p>“Crazy is a good look on you,” Izuna drawls, letting Tobirama’s hips work furiously with ill-concealed humor. His jaw cracks open in a yawn so huge it stretches the hallmark lines of the Edo Tensei seal.  “Could probably hit my throat if you put some actual effort into it.”</p>
<p>Wincing, Tobirama stills. The rage is still there along with something else he refuses to name, but the maelstrom of emotion doesn’t sit well. He collapses onto his fists, forcing craters into the futon to either side of Izuna’s head.</p>
<p>“No, not this one. Pick a different memory,” he rasps, trying to catch his breath.</p>
<p>Izuna watches him closely, assessing. “You sure? I can make it messier. I know you like that.”</p>
<p>The image blurs and when it focuses again there’s blood everywhere—blotting his face, matting his hair to the linens in long, sticky strings. He smiles up beatifically with his black-on-black eyes like Tobirama’s own personal demon, come oozing out between his teeth.</p>
<p>“Guess I was right about the throat thing,” he teases.</p>
<p>Tobirama swallows heavily as Izuna swipes release from his own tongue and proceeds to drag it through the blood on his chest in the first few strokes of Tobirama’s name.</p>
<p>“Stop. Go back, Izuna. This isn’t what I…”</p>
<p>It’s impossible to voice what he actually wants. There’s too much yearning tied up in a man he already has. Fortunately, Izuna has known him long enough—intimately enough outside of this genjutsu—to read him without words.  </p>
<p>“Easy, Snowflake. I’ve got you,” his disembodied voice says from above and all around as the room fades to black.</p>
<p>Endless void stretches the sound around Tobirama until he begins to hear the suggestion of walls. An enclosed space, sterile and thick with the pungency of disinfectant. His lab. Yes, this is what he needs, to relive that ultimate taste of victory while witnessing a thousand different futures unfurling before him, each more beautiful than the last. Izuna knows him very, very well. </p>
<p>A crack of lightning illuminates the space and Tobirama can feel the shinigami’s breath cold on his neck, skeletal hands pulling his kosode from his shoulders and leaving it to hang lifeless from his waist. Edo Tensei is a powerful tool, one of both pleasure and pain. It rides the knife’s edge of sacrilege, a blade the kami can only rail against in their impotence. </p>
<p>He tips his head back to rest on the shinigami’s shoulder, grinning at the surge of chakra beneath his breastbone.  </p>
<p>Sacrilegious or not, Izuna’s life was his domain and his death belongs to him as well. He says as much, earning a bass chuckle that resonates through his soul. </p>
<p>“Then take it, you avaricious thing,” the shinigami croons. </p>
<p>With a great, wracking gasp, the corpse of an anonymous shinobi scrabbles at the wooden slats beneath her, not two paces from Tobirama’s sandals. She screams soundlessly with bloodless lips working the air. Ink spews from eyes long since replaced and pours along the floor like a thing possessed. It fills the thirsty seal carved into the floor, sweeping back in to creep up her neck and swirl around her—no, Izuna’s—sclera. Every swollen teardrop rips furrows through his skin, so pale and perfect under the flaking remnants of the kunoichi’s muddied complexion. </p>
<p>It’s horror and joy. Condemnation and deliverance. </p>
<p>This is Tobirama’s design, his gift. </p>
<p>The shinigami laughs, anchoring Tobirama’s hip when he makes to step forward and broach Izuna’s seal. “Enjoy the fruits of your labor while you can, Senju Tobirama. When you die, I will collect you both,” it proclaims. </p>
<p>Scoffing, Tobirama twists free of its grasp, ignoring the bright flare of pain that shoots down his left leg. “Then I’ll endeavor not to die at all,” he snaps, lips pressed thin. If there is a way, he’ll find it. He won’t make the mistake of letting Izuna go again. </p>
<p>A strange amalgamation of the shinigami’s multi-tonal guffaw and Izuna’s far more familiar merriment peels back the darkness. Strips of genjutsu fall away like desiccated lavender petals until only one last vestige remains. </p>
<p>The bedroom they share is exactly as he left it with its hanging swaths of red and blue scrollwork alternating along the walls,  so intertwined they appear purple in his periphery. Warmth rises in tendrils of steam from between the floorboards where katon and suiton work together below to heat their brothers’ home.   </p>
<p>This is the future they’ve built—not one bled from animosity, but an altogether different Konoha founded under the direction of clans that have never been anything but amicable. Senju and Uchiha crests comingled over two hundred years ago when Asura and Indra came together to augment katana with shield. They remain that way to this day, but Tobirama dreams, continues to hunger for things he shouldn’t.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Izuna has never balked in the face of his perversities.</p>
<p>“Is this what you want, <em>Senju</em>?” he hisses, emphasizing the surname as a slur just as the Izuna from that other place would. “Took you long enough to bring me down. I was starting to think you’d lost your edge.”</p>
<p>Here, pinned face-down in the futon under Tobirama’s weight there are no weapons left to him except for a sharp tongue and clutching heat. He fists the bedding so hard it tears under his strength even as he uses the extra leverage to slam back into the cradle of Tobirama’s hips. The wet slap resounds in a space kept small and warded to close off the outside world for a time.</p>
<p>“Not that you wouldn’t find a way, you cheating bastard.” A pause for breath. “You'll never stop until you make me bend for you. Well, more than I already am,” he wheezes under the pressure, losing the last of his air on a laugh. The constrictions of his body around Tobirama’s cock—warm, alive, and vibrant—belie how far gone he is, lost to the shared pleasure, but not so far gone he can’t remember what comes next.</p>
<p>A kunai materializes half-embedded in the back of his neck, its seal tag flapping with the rhythmic passion of their sex. The sweeping lines of blood and ink offer control and ownership in equal measure. It’s a claim with such finality Tobirama can’t help but moan at the imagining, even knowing it’s a genjutsu-wrought illusion.</p>
<p>“What must I do to shut you up, Uchiha?” he snaps, voice low and thick.</p>
<p>"You know."</p>
<p>He thrusts harder, rocking them both and forcing Izuna down almost flat against the futon.</p>
<p>There are divots just under his hips that fit the line of Tobirama’s fingers, and dimples in the muscle where his thumbs naturally rest. He’s mapped all of the places they fit together thoroughly enough in the past fifteen years—since they were boys of an age for playing at courting games—to recall them by feel. Even if the genjutsu has given Izuna a thicker waist and skin that sloughs away like ash under the abuse, there’s no mistaking this man for the anyone other than the one who has seen the heart of him.</p>
<p>It’s both reassuring and a touch disappointing not to be able to lose himself in the fantasy completely. Still, he continues to take what he can.</p>
<p>Tobirama’s labored inhale brings with it the scent of a gathering storm, something so innately ‘Izuna’ that he can’t help but drown in it. He holds tighter, ruts faster. There’s barely any space between them and the wet slide of sweat makes it so that they can stay that way without stopping. The angle may not be the deepest or the best for splitting Izuna in twain, but being this intimate is just as good.</p>
<p>There’s a freneticism there that can’t be duplicated. This passion, this obsession, this love.</p>
<p>Another flutter around Tobirama’s swollen cockhead heralds the telltale hitch of Izuna’s hips. Soon. Grunting with the effort, Tobirama pistons with all of the strength left to him—inelegant and animalistic. He slams one forearm down across Izuna’s shoulder blades to hold him still and yanks his other arm free to take hold of the kunai handle jutting up from his neck.   </p>
<p>The genjutsu  phases through Tobirama’s hand, but only for a second, then Izuna catches back up and offers the feeling of a leather-wrapped shaft held firmly against his palm. A moment of resistance and a sudden give has Tobirama’s vision whiting out as the blade finds a home.</p>
<p>He comes then, screaming Izuna’s name and using his grip on the kunai as leverage to bury his cock as fully as possible, pulsing in long, drawn out spurts. Time stretches out then coalesces into one pristine moment where everything in the world is right and good once more.</p>
<p>Under him, black cracks and flaking skin waver, replaced by a long, pale spine, bowed and completely devoid of the patchwork scars Tobirama laid down in another life. Izuna is beautiful when he releases—full lips open wide and voice caught as the world around them shatters.</p>
<p>The genjutsu fails completely then, returning Tobirama to the arms of the Izuna he knows. It’s hard to be disappointed when his mouth is dry and his cock so thoroughly drained.</p>
<p>They pitch over to the side, still connected and boneless in the aftermath.</p>
<p>It takes Tobirama longer than usual to come back down, only reluctantly allowing Izuna to shift away from the overwhelming fire raging between their bodies. His oversensitive cock slips free with a lurid, wet sound, but the disappointment is soon replaced by the familiar comfort of Izuna’s arm forcing its way under his waist to embrace him more fully.</p>
<p>A deep, languid kiss soon follows. Amazing how much can be said in a simple press of lips.  </p>
<p>“What will you do when a genjutsu isn’t enough?” Tobirama murmurs as he sucks first at Izuna’s tongue, then moves on to his lower lip. And it’s not a question born of academic interest. His proclivities have been more or less curbed by Izuna’s unrivaled skill, but the novelty will eventually wear thin and playacting won’t always suffice. When the day finally comes that Tobirama’s very real kunai finds a home in flesh—painstakingly carves out the chakric channels of the Edo Tensei in Izuna’s skin—what then?</p>
<p>Nothing short of death and rebirth can ever truly satisfy.</p>
<p>As always, Izuna laughs in the face of a very real threat. “Tell you what,” he says brushing wet strands of hair from Tobirama’s forehead with faux concern, “we can take turns offing each other tomorrow and find out. I’ll do you first.”</p>
<p>His smile is wide and bright, but Tobirama has only ever glimpsed the true beauty of him in the rictus grin of a cadaver.</p>
<p>“Izuna,” he warns to no effect.</p>
<p>Izuna stretches until his toes curl against Tobirama’s shins and his shoulders pop. Moaning, he wraps Tobirama up in an embrace far stronger than it should be with him so warm and pliant in his satiation.</p>
<p>“What? You’ll just have to figure out how to be happy with having glorious me for as long as we’ve got. Can we go to sleep now or is there another hour of deep philosophical debate to get out of the way first?” he quips, maneuvering his thighs to capture Tobirama’s flaccid cock between them. He squeezes just hard enough to elicit a jolt.</p>
<p>And even the pain of over-sensitization is enough to have Tobirama’s stomach tightening with the complexity of his want. No one has ever been able to give him as much pain nor as much pleasure as Uchiha Izuna. “If anything happens, I won’t be able to let you go,” he says, more honesty in the space of a breath than they’ve ever voiced aloud.  </p>
<p>Izuna pats his hip, eyelashes fluttering as he yawns. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a possessive bastard. I’m well aware.”</p>
<p>That’s the shape of it, Tobirama supposes, but the semantics aren’t quite right. It’s not greedy to cling to something that was already inherently his. Preservation? Protection? Regardless, he allows the subject to drop, knowing that Izuna will never quite understand that his agency is a sham erected and allowed to stand by Tobirama’s grace alone. Or maybe it’s Tobirama’s illusion of choice that is a sham. Either way, he is content enough to leave it be for now.  </p>
<p>Silence stretches as the remnants of their passion grow tacky.</p>
<p>“You know, normal people just get married,” Izuna announces as they lie on the cusp of sleep.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to marry you.” As if they were meant for anything so trite. Their bond will transcend death—bowing to mortal law would make a mockery of all of the plans Tobirama has stewing in the back of his mind.  </p>
<p>Izuna presses against him with a put upon sigh and a huff of self-deprecating laughter.</p>
<p>“Figures. You had better dream of me at least, you asshole.”</p>
<p>And that at least is a demand Tobirama has no qualms with, falling asleep to the feel of Izuna’s body and the imagining of black irises, black sclera, black fissures—a world of light coalescing in the shade of a dead man.  </p>
<p>In a word, paradise. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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